As a woman leader, business owner, and student of the brain and leadership for the last several decades, I believe it is time for us to change the conversation and mindset about women in the workplace. As G.D. Anderson said, “Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong. It’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength.”

In the spirit of this year’s International Women's Day theme of #ChooseToChallenge, here are 4 areas we should all challenge ourselves to change perceptions. 

When you’re talking about a people-driven function like Human Resources (it’s in the name, after all), Big Data might not be the first thing that comes to mind. But the HR function has actually moved at a faster pace than many others in integrating analytics and business intelligence into its practices.

A study by Oracle found that 98% of respondents agreed that they can use data to predict workforce needs, 94% use it to predict turnover, and 94% say it gives them insight into employees’ career goals.

However, one of the authors of that study cautions that this doesn’t mean everything’s “rosy in the world of HR analytics.”

In the last few weeks, there's been a lot of content floating around focusing on what it means to work remote.

But one thing that many of these articles have assumed is that even if everyone isn't working at the same place, they're all working at the same time. Once you've given up all going to the same office, it's worth asking, do you even need to keep the same office hours? As a manager, can you effectively manage people through asynchronous communication, team members who aren't even online at the same time as you?

Remote environments can be challenging to navigate under normal circumstances. Add in a global environment of stress and uncertainty, and those relationships and engagements can be even more difficult to manage. 

If you ever needed cognitive diversity and thinking agility, now is the time! With the current global atmosphere of rampant change and volatility, you need to leverage all of the thinking resources available to you, especially when it comes to effective decision making in the face of crisis.

Everything in the world around us has changed. But have you? Has your team?

Here’s the challenge: Change requires a different mindset, but the brain loves routine. It naturally seeks and organizes around patterns and mental maps you’ve developed in your thinking throughout the course of your life. Sometimes these maps are helpful; sometimes they’re not. Most change requires that we challenge our mental maps and form new connections in the brain—and this takes energy and motivation.

Not only that, isolated facts have little effect on mindsets. This probably isn’t news to you if you’ve ever read comments on social media or argued with someone over a heated topic. If the fact doesn’t fit the current mindset, it gets rejected instantly.

What is it about our brains that resists change so tenaciously? Why do we fight, even what we know to be in our interests?

If you’re a leader, you set the direction and vision for your organization or department, but there’s still a lot that’s not completely under your control: the behavior of other people, the state of the economy, the unfolding of world events, the overall pace of change. Sure, you can anticipate and react to these things, but you can’t totally control them.

What’s surprising, though, is how few leaders take the time to notice the one thing they can always control, even when the world is out of control: their thinking.

Whenever a disruptive business story breaks—like Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods—the innovation mandates follow. The message: If you don’t start rethinking your game and, in some cases, even reinventing your mission, you could be the next cautionary tale, the “slow giant that failed to innovate.”

As companies focus more intently on innovation, whether it’s the big, transformational kind or smaller, incremental improvements and pivots, we’re also seeing a growing trend in recognizing the value of diversity in the innovation process. McKesson, for example, proclaimed in their 2016 Diversity & Inclusion Report, “We believe a diverse workforce is a fundamental building block for creativity and innovation.” And Apple CEO Tim Cook has said, “I think the most diverse group will produce the best product, I firmly believe that.”

But clearly it’s not as simple as all that. If it was, we’d be seeing a lot more innovative output.

What’s the number one thing your company can do to attract the best and brightest up-and-coming talent? Provide them with opportunities to learn and grow.

But what about keeping them once they join your organization?

More and more, companies are discovering that an effective mentoring program is one of the most powerful ways to build loyalty. According to Deloitte’s 2016 Millennial Survey, millennial employees who intend to stay with their organization for more than five years are twice as likely to have a mentor (68%) than not (32%).

But it’s not as simple as setting up a mentoring program. Whether or not a mentor pair is successful is highly dependent on the effectiveness of the mentor-mentee match.

So, how do you make a good match?

In Verizon Conferencing’s “Meetings in America” study, 91% of meeting attendees admitted to daydreaming during meetings. Nearly 40% of the respondents said they’ve taken a nap during a meeting. Are people sleeping through your meetings?

With attention at a premium in today’s world, keeping people engaged, even when they’re sitting right in front of you, is one of the biggest challenges you face when leading a meeting. If they’re not literally asleep, your participants might be texting, checking their emails or just generally tuned out. Telling people to put away their phones isn’t the answer. Making your meetings more effective is.